18 February, 2017

Making America broke again: Trump & the inevitable financial crisis

Trump
can either ‘bite the bullet’ now if he really wants to improve
the American economy or he can ‘kick the can down the road’ like
his predecessors have, noted financial commentator Peter Schiff tells
MintPress.

by
Whitney Webb

Part
1

Barack Obama
insisted throughout his time in office that the financial crisis that
began in 2008 and fundamentally altered the U.S. economic landscape
was a thing of the past. Despite Obama’s insistence that his
economic “recovery” was successful and that critics of his
economic policy were “peddling fiction,” many Americans were not
convinced.

Donald Trump
recognized this, and was ultimately propelled to the nation’s
highest office due to his oft-repeated promise to “Make America
Great Again” with a special emphasis on bolstering the American
economy.

In the weeks
since Trump took office, media attention has largely focused on the
so-called “Muslim ban” as well as other executive actions
targeting immigrants, limiting the actions of certain federal
agencies, and escalating certain geopolitical tensions.

The media’s
focus on these and other issues has allowed key developments in the
implementation of the president’s economic policy to go largely
unnoticed. In particular, there’s been relatively scant
attention paid to the Trump administration’s decision to order a
thorough review of banking regulations with the express intention of
loosening them.

This
decision, widely criticized by powerful central banks and proponents
of Obama-era financial reform, represents the latest iteration of a
growing spat between the financial establishment and the Trump
administration. Each side accuses the other of depressing economic
growth and increasing the likelihood of a major economic event or
“correction” that would dwarf that of 2008.

Yet, as is
often the case in such disputes, the truth of the matter lies
somewhere in the middle and ultimately has relatively little to do
with Trump.

Peter
Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital and one of the few financial
commentators to accurately predict the 2008 crisis, noted in an
interview with MintPress News, “The crisis is going to come
regardless of the actions Trump or Congress may take. I think
[Trump’s potential loosening of regulations] is going to be
irrelevant. It could accelerate the crisis or it could delay it.”

Regardless
of who is to blame, however, there is no denying that a major
economic crisis is once again on the horizon, one that will
fundamentally change the economic landscape of the nation and trigger
a series of wide-reaching consequences.